The American Evasion of Philosophy by Cornel West

First published: 1989

Type of work: Cultural criticism

Form and Content

Announcing in his introduction that this book is a political act, Cornel West in The American Evasion of Philosophy seeks in a tradition of American thought a source for effective political, or “prophetic,” action. It is to this tradition that West refers by the phrase “evasion of philosophy,” in which the word “evasion” does not carry its usual negative connotations. Rather, West asserts that when Ralph Waldo Emerson—the great nineteenth century American poet, essayist, and thinker and the founding father of this tradition—turned away from the questions that had been the primary concerns of Western philosophy for centuries, he avoided, or evaded, the blind alley into which philosophy had wandered. Emerson thereby founded the American tradition of philosophy as cultural criticism, emphasizing the application of the critical intelligence to the solution of problems that confront individuals involved in society and culture. West calls this tradition “American pragmatism,” and he articulates his version of the historical development of that tradition. The goal is to define how American pragmatism can inform the thought and action of men and women who, like West, remain committed to the cause of social progress.

In addition to turning away from the entanglements of philosophy, Emerson in the middle of the nineteenth century prefigured both what would become the major themes of American pragmatism—power, provocation, and personality—and what would become its crucial motifs—optimism, moralism, and individualism. However, Emerson remained sufficiently bound to the cultural limitations of his era, for example to the “soft racism” that warped the thought even of enlightened white men of Emerson’s generation, to require that his contributions to the tradition be revised and reformed by those who came after. This process of revising and reforming, with the implication that closure is never fully achieved, may, in fact, constitute the tradition itself.

The American pragmatic tradition is carried on in the latter part of the nineteenth century by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Peirce, who coined the term “pragmatism,” re-examines the tradition in the light of the emergence, in the course of the nineteenth century, of the scientific method as the primary model of intellectual activity. While acknowledging the power of the scientific method, Peirce asserts that it is not universally applicable. Rather, it is applicable only to the scientific community engaged in rational inquiry. Answering the great questions of religion and ethics, for example, requires a radically different approach, one that acknowledges the claims of dogma, custom, habit, and tradition. If Peirce seems divided within himself at this point, the difficulty may be resolved by his pragmatic understanding of meaning as constituted by the practical consequences that might conceivably result by necessity from the truth of an intellectual conception. The emphasis on consequences will remain at the heart of American pragmatism.

This emphasis is recognizable, for example, in William James’s frequently quoted formulation: “Truth happens to an idea, it becomes true, is made true by events.” More than Peirce, who developed the applications of pragmatic thought to communities, James focuses on individuals. Both men, like Emerson before them, reject the philosopher’s futile quest for the ultimate foundation of truth. Truth, in James’s thought, no longer rests in splendid isolation but becomes a species of the good. In Emerson, West suggests, we see “Man Thinking”; in Peirce, “Man Inquiring”; in James, “Man Willing.”

Peirce and James provide the kind of creative interpretations of Emersonian notions essential to the processes of revising and reforming, but it is in the work of John Dewey in the first half of the twentieth century that American pragmatism comes of age. The great breakthrough achieved by Dewey, who was one of the first to appreciate Emerson’s standing as a philosopher, was to bring larger structures, systems, and institutions to the center of his thought without forfeiting his allegiance to Emersonian concerns with individuality and personality. Through him, American pragmatism became involved in the project of social reform. His links to the urbanized, professional, reformist elements of the middle class assured that he would have a far more immediate impact on society than any of his predecessors had. He championed the critical intelligence as an instrument not for generating metaphysical puzzles but for overcoming obstacles, resolving problems, and projecting realizable possibilities for the betterment of the human condition. More inclined than Peirce to valorize science, he was concerned to extend the experimental method of the natural sciences to the spheres of politics, culture, and economics.

Inevitably, Dewey compromised more than once, in both thought and action, in the course of a long and productive life. He was only partly successful in achieving his goals. As America approached the middle of the century and as the middle-class reformers who constituted Dewey’s primary constituency became seduced by competing managerial and Marxist ideologies, it was by no means clear that the legacy to which Dewey had contributed so much could long survive.

In fact, the story of American pragmatism at midcentury is essentially one of uncertainty. The experience of economic depression in the 1930’s, of World War II in the 1940’s, and of the Cold War that commenced before the 1940’s were over, had a chastening effect on pragmatic intellectuals. The optimism that had been a crucial motif of the tradition became muted, and midcentury pragmatists such as Sidney Hook, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling began to emphasize the acceptance of limits and the cultivation of the tragic view as the beginning, if not the end, of wisdom. Even the radical C. Wright Mills and the great African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois joined in an attitude of distrust of the poor and working class, thus abandoning a fundamental tenet of the Emersonian notion of creative democracy. Du Bois did, however, make major contributions to pragmatic thought in his internationalist sensitivity to the wretched of the earth and in his insistence that American reformist thought must at last confront the issue of race.

In the years immediately following the midpoint of the century, pragmatism suffered a serious decline. Although the eminent American philosopher W. V. O. Quine affirmed, within limits, the spirit of American pragmatism, other modes of philosophical inquiry assumed positions of dominance within the academy, and no figure of Dewey’s stature (Dewey himself died in 1952) arose to reassert the pragmatic insights.

The last quarter of the twentieth century, however, saw a reawakening of interest in the possibilities of pragmatism. Richard Rorty, who called himself a neopragmatist, played a major role in this renewal. Rorty directed his readers to eschew the quest for certainty and the search for foundations that characterized the philosophy Emerson evaded. The consequences of Rorty’s pragmatism involve a collapse of the distinction between the natural sciences and the human sciences, which include the social sciences and the humanities, and a new positioning of philosophy, not as the tribunal of pure reason, but as one voice among others in a grand conversation.

The notion of conversation is the key to what finally limits Rorty’s version of pragmatism. His neopragmatism requires no change in cultural and political practices. This observation leads to West’s affirmation of prophetic pragmatism as a deeply American response to the three shaping events of the second half of the twentieth century: the end of the age of Europe; the emergence of the United States as a world power; and the decolonization of the developing world. In what for West remains a Christian perspective, prophetic pragmatism derives from Emerson’s evasion of philosophy a form of cultural criticism that attempts to transform linguistic, social, cultural, and political traditions for the purpose of increasing the scope of individual development and democratic operations. The great example of prophetic pragmatism in its political dimension is the struggle of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Critical Context

Cornel West is regarded by many as the foremost African American intellectual of his generation. Insofar as “intellectual” suggests an ivory-tower remoteness from the concerns of ordinary people, however, it hardly seems the right term to describe West. His status as a lay preacher is merely one indication of the depth of his Christian commitment, and West’s Christianity is at all times deeply involved with the realities of existence. He is the kind of Christian who can build a social outlook on the insights of Karl Marx and who can test those insights against the real experiences of the African American community, which calls forth his deepest loyalty. If an intellectual is someone who can forge vital relationships between the life of the mind and the life of the street, then no one has a clearer claim to the title than does Cornel West.

West’s first book was Prophecy Deliverance! An Afro-American Revolutionary Christianity (1982). This was followed in 1988 by Prophetic Fragments. In these books, West formulated a critique of capitalism on the basis both of Marxism and of the tradition of social protest associated with the African American church. In The American Evasion of Philosophy, West turns his attention to an American tradition that is primarily a product of the white middle class. West has insisted that an African American self-regard cannot be based on either demonizing or deifying white America. His ability to take from a “white” tradition what he needs as a committed African American, together with his willingness to give full credit to all that is positive and creative in that tradition, reflects his own rejection of demonization. His clear-eyed account of all that is limited and compromised within that tradition, from Emerson’s soft racism onward, demonstrates his dismissal of deification. Free of both distortions, he can find the relevance of this “white” tradition to the cause of African American liberation, one of the vital oppositional movements in contemporary America.

An important achievement of The American Evasion of Philosophy, then, is that West asserts the “American” side of the formulation “African American” by claiming for himself the tradition of American pragmatism. A more profound achievement, perhaps, is that this assertion is not permitted in the slightest degree to obscure or compromise the author’s “African” identity. As West commences to lead his readers beyond multiculturalism, he works effectively to confirm that the American tradition cannot involve a continued suppression of the African heritage. West has not necessarily spoken the last word on what it is to be an African American. The words he has spoken, however, deserve attention.

Bibliography

Allen, Norm R., Jr. “The Crisis of the Black Religious Intellectual.” Free Inquiry 14 (Summer, 1994): 9-10. Allen discusses Stephen L. Carter and West, two significant black intellectuals whose orientation is religious. Both believe that for society to survive and progress, faith in God is crucial. They assess modern culture and past history from religious perspectives. Allen contends that their doing so limits their intellectual depth. He especially faults them for their insistence that their religious texts are absolute, sacred texts that should be accepted unconditionally.

Anderson, Jervis. “The Public Intellectual.” The New Yorker 69 (January 17, 1994): 39-46. Anderson acknowledges West’s appeal to young people. He cautions that despite his popular acceptance, West is viewed by many of his professional colleagues as superficial in his writing and thinking and so broad in the generalizations he makes as to compromise many of his philosophical conclusions.

Appiah, K. Anthony. “A Prophetic Pragmatism.” The Nation 250 (April 9, 1990): 496-498. Examines how West bridges cultural theory and the African American community and his attempt to mount a pragmatic cultural critique. Argues that West’s prophetic pragmatism, though drawing on continental influences, remains in the American grain.

Berube, Michael. “Public Academy.” The New Yorker 70 (January 9, 1995): 73-80. In this article, Berube pays special attention to West, bell hooks, Michael Eric Dyson, and Derrick Bell. He comments on the fact that current African American intellectuals, unlike those of the past, have gained recognition as important critics of current culture; they have done so by participating in talk shows and in gatherings at various centers for black popular culture. He portrays the subjects of his articles as intellectuals who are neither stifled by scholarly tradition nor characterized by remoteness from the public.

Boynton, Robert S. “Princeton’s Public Intellectual.” The New York Times Magazine, September 15, 1991, 39. Asserts that West is a synthesizer, a radical traditionalist: He embraces the canon, but he also demands its revision; he wants Americans to study their own indigenous philosophical tradition, enriching it with the work of classical European sociologists, rather than to rely on the latest theoretical fashions from Paris. Notes that West’s position may try to accommodate so many disparate voices as to dissipate its authority.

Cascardi, Anthony J. Review of The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism, by Cornel West. Philosophy and Literature 14, no. 2 (1990): 413-415. States that West’s ambition is to reinterpret the pragmatist tradition in order to address the crisis of the American Left.

Cowan, Rosemary. Cornel West: The Politics of Redemption. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003. This volume in the Key Contemporary Thinkers series analyzes West’s contribution to various philosophical and cultural traditions and the role of redemptive Christianity in his ethical philosophy.

Donovan, Rickard. “Cornel West’s New Pragmatism.” Cross Currents 41 (Spring, 1991): 98-106. Argues that The American Evasion of Philosophy represents West’s attempt to see his religious involvement and political participation in the light of leading American philosophers. Asserts that West wants more social theory in pragmatism.

Gavin, William J. Review of The American Evasion of Philosophy, by Cornel West. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 6, no. 1 (1992): 91-94. Observes that West offers a social history of ideas. Sees West’s prophetic pragmatism as more of a “will to believe” in the manner of William James than West realizes, but asserts that West’s perspective does point beyond itself in a prophetic, directional fashion.

Jacoby, Russell. “Pragmatists and Politics.” Dissent 37 (Summer, 1990): 403-405. Argues that The American Evasion of Philosophy suffers from overambition: West is often incisive about the thinkers he discusses, but the assortment is too random and the links to pragmatism are too lax. West’s project of reclaiming American pragmatism, Jacoby says, is salutary but incomplete.

Johnson, Clarence Sholé. Cornel West and Philosophy: The Quest for Social Justice. New York: Routledge, 2003. Examines the connection between pragmatism as a theory of truth and the ethical drive for social justice in West’s work.

Keller, Catherine, and Joseph A. Colombo. “Two North American Political Christianities.” Religious Studies Review 18 (April, 1992): 103-110. Asserts that West’s work embodies the ideal of the organic intellectual, who is linked to prophetic movements and who relates ideas to the everyday life of ordinary people. Observes that West elects a neo-orthodox option that is firmly rooted in the African American church.

Nichols, John. “Cornel West.” The Progressive 61 (January, 1997: 26-29. In his extended interview with West, Nichols broaches questions about radical democracy, about whose future West is pessimistic. West calls on political progressives to respect the religious concerns of African Americans. He is not optimistic about the substantive help they might receive from the Democratic Party, despite black support of that party in the 1996 elections.

White, Jack E. “Philosopher with a Mission.” Time 141 (June 7, 1993): 60-62. White pays special attention to West’s Race Matters, identifying West as an intellectual and a rising civil rights leader. In Race Matters, West considers the status of race relations in the United States as the twentieth century draws to a close. West calls for an end to racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Yancy, George, ed. Cornel West: A Critical Reader. Cambridge Mass.: Blackwell, 2001. A collection of eighteen essays on the philosopher and academician. West is considered an important intellectual figure in African American studies and in the world of critical thinking.